Bully's Blog

Furnishing the New House

Zechariah’s night visions move God’s furniture around. As we saw, the instructions for the Tabernacle furniture align it with the Creation Week. And the Creation Week corresponds with the seven Feasts. Zechariah’s visions follow the Creation and Feast patterns, but the Tabernacle furniture has been shifted around all over the place.

Now, you will probably ask how eight visions can align with seven days or seven feasts. The answer is that it takes the two visions in chapter 5 to reflect the Day of Atonement. Thus:

Sabbath – Day 1
The post-captivity church is seen as still being in the grave, the Abyss, literally, “the deep” (translated badly as glen or valley)

Passover – Day 2
 The horned incense altar is reconstructed, symbolising Israel’s new eldership and worship. Usually, the incense altar is at Day 5, but here, it is this altar’s renewal that re-establishes the nation as a mediator – a Holy Place firmament – between God and the nations. This aligns with Day 2.

Firstfruits – Day 3
This feast is the Ascension of Joseph, Moses, Daniel and Christ to the right hand of God to open the mystery scroll, the Law. A command is given to the people to flee the Babylon of their hearts, which lifts Jerusalem as a new “earth” (Land) out of the Gentile sea. This New Jerusalem would be too large to enclose with walls. Her influence would extend throughout the empire. The empire was the New Canaan, resurrected after the Babylonian “flood.”

Pentecost – Day 4
The serpent/Destroying Angel stands before the throne rightly accusing the disgraced priesthood of being unclean. In a re-enactment of Passover, Israel is covered. (Note that this vision is the Passover of the feast pattern that covers the entire book of Zechariah. But as the centre of the night visions, it is the crux, the thesis, the main point of transition at midnight that allows a new day to dawn.)

As in many previous patterns, the serpent is defeated at the central point of the visions. Step 4 is the wilderness at the centre of the New Creation Matrix. Which brings us to the white stone with seven eyes.

Trumpets – Day 5
The Lampstand is always at the central point, as the eyes of God’s Law watching over His Showbread tribes, both guarding and inspecting them. But in these visions, the Lampstand signifies the witness of God’s people. At Ascension the Tabernacle is built. It is tested by Law at Pentecost and most often torn apart.

At Step 5 it is a Lampstand reconstructed. It is the next generation in the wilderness, now trained as an army, or the Tabernacle of David after the Ark’s sojourn. The angel says, however, that the conquest will not be by military might in this New Israel, but by the Spirit. The Lampstand has been moved to accent its role as the symbol of this new Israel now that the Ark was gone. The head of the sacrifice had ascended to govern heaven (Ark – Adam-light) and the body would now “ascend” to govern the Land (Lampstand – Eve-lights).

It is important to notice that Revelation also places its two olive-tree witnesses at Trumpets — the apostles, filled with the Spirit, mustering an army of witnesses before Judah was finally cut in two on her last Day of Atonement.

Atonement – Day 6
Zechariah sees a flying Covenant scroll, the ascended Ark as the first goat, speaking curses upon Israel’s hidden sins. He sees the Ark’s evil twin exiled as the second goat to Shinar (Babylon) and set on a false throne.

Tabernacles – Day 7
With a New Covenant carried out in the Lord’s court – legally – the swift horses ride out between the bronze pillar/mountains into a New Land.

Now, all this was to be able to understand the significance of the stone in Zechariah 4. The stone has “holy to the Lord”, the seven eyes of the Law, written upon it at the Pentecost victory over the serpent (Zech. 3). The angel then says that Zerubbabel will bring forth the capstone to public acclamation. Not being High Priest, Zechariah could only see inside the Holy Place in his visions (unlike Ezekiel), but even the events concerning Joshua in the Holy Place were hidden from the eyes of this resurrected nation. So, we have seven-eyed stone, a capstone and the “set apart” stone (mistranslated as plumbline because it might be the metal we call tin). Are any of these three items related?

Meredith Kline seems to think so. (See Glory in Our Midst, p. 158-159).

But Mark Jauhiainen doesn’t think so. In his The Use of Zechariah in Revelation, on p. 83 he says basically that any connection is an assumption, and that the seven eyes in Zech. 4 refer to the Lampstand (seven spirits), not the stone. So the stone can’t be linked with the white stone in Revelation 2. (I have to say this gentlemen spends a lot of time telling us what things are not, but then cannot tell us what they are! I think literary structure helps us a lot to make links where he sees none.)

What he misses, I think, is that in Revelation 4, the “seven eyes” of the Lampstand are suddenly reflected in the seven eyes of the Lamb of God. And the Lamb of God is in place of the un-mentioned Table of Showbread (John describes everything but the Table). So, where Israel failed to reflect God’s Law as the perfect Adam, the Lamb succeeded. There are now seven eyes in both the south and north, the ruler and the ruled. The Lamb has the seven spirits of God (the eyes of the Law), and also the seven horns of authority, weapons to carry out His judgment so that He might be vindicated upon His unrepentant murderers.

So, to tie this all together, the white stone is the heavenly bread given at Ascension (Israel received manna directly after the Passover/Red Sea) and broken in the wilderness. Manna was the colour of bdellium, and the stone in Zerrubabel’s hands is bedil the root of which means to divide or separate. The stone is set apart, divided, and seeing as the word has a definite article (habbedil) it makes sense if it refers to the capstone 3 verses prior.

If all this does actually hang together, we have a piece of faithful wilderness bread that is now a sanctified, shiny stone engraved with seven eyes, brought out in public (through a split mountain) and lifted up as part of a new public witness to complete the new Temple.

Are you getting my drift?

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